Islamic radicals may have been plotting attacks in Barcelona, Spain’s Interior Minister Alfredo Perez Rubalcaba said on Saturday, after police found bomb-making materials and arrested 14 South Asians.

Rubalcaba told a news conference civil guard police found explosives and other equipment during raids on five addresses in Spain’s second city, and arrested 12 Pakistanis and two Indians after receiving information from its own and other European intelligence agencies.

Spain suffered Europe’s deadliest Islamist attack when four Madrid trains were bombed in March 2004, killing 191 commuters and wounding a further 1,800, three days before a general election. With less than two months before Spain’s next national poll, Rubalcaba said security services remained on high alert.

The interior minister said Saturday’s raids were distinct from many operations against Islamic militants in the past, which largely targeted groups seeking to finance radical groups or recruit members to fight.

“Here we are looking at something different: a well-organized group who were going beyond ideological radicalism to acquiring materials to make explosives and therefore eventually to carry out violent attacks,” he said.

Spain’s intelligence services have warned France, Portugal and the UK that radicals, principally of Pakistani origin, were ready to launch imminent attacks, newspaper website El Pais reported. It gave no further details.

Spain’s Interior Ministry regards Islamic militants, rather than Basque separatists ETA, as Spain’s greatest security threat and has significantly beefed up surveillance of mosques and employed more Arabic translators in the last four years.

Rubalcaba said the group, which had stockpiled bomb-making materials including timers and ball-bearings, had been ready to act. Computers were also seized during the operation in the historic district of Raval just after midnight.

At this point, at least a few Spaniards might be realizing that Spain’s craven yielding to the Islamists in 2004 (when Spaniards flocked to the polls to elect a government they knew would withdraw from Iraq) did not, in fact, placate the implacable. Although Islamists play to the West by offering one specific grievance or another (American’s on sacred soil in Saudi Arabia, American support of Israel, Spanish support of America, etc.), those are just sops to the credulous. This is full out war, with the world as the Islamists’ battlefield and the Western press as their usefully idiotic mouthpiece.

Spain distinguished itself after the 3/11 train bombings by instantly backing down from the fight and infecting itself with Leftism. The fallout from this infection is clear:

Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, Prime Minister of Spain and Secretary General of the Socialist Party, arrived to power at a time nobody expected, not even inside the Party.

Keen on populist tirades against the United States “Dickhead Bush” and “Ketchup Queen Kerry”, his whole campaign did not bring much attention until the moment Al-Qaeda decided to blow up Madrid trains, killing almost 200 people and bringing to an end Spain’s membership of the West.

From that moment on, everybody knew nothing would be the same, and Spanish Jews knew there were hard times ahead. Prime Minister Zapatero has not disappointed them.

Although many experts had foretold of the imminent disappearing of European Jews, nobody expected such a virulent explosion of anti-Semitism in Spain, not even under a Leftist government.

The first signal came on Monday, 5 December, when during a dinner with the Benarroch family, Zapatero and wife began claiming what Vidal Quadras, member of the European Parliament, described on the radio as “a tirade of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism”.

By the moment the Benarroch couple had left the table to express their regrets, Zapatero was explaining his lack of surprise about the Holocaust: according to the people present, Zapatero claimed to understand the Nazis.

And that’s only the first half of an article describing Spain’s swift descent into modern anti-Semitism. I emphasize the word modern because I think it’s pretty clear that this explosion of anti-Semitism has absolutely nothing to do with Spain’s role in the forefront of the anti-Jewish movement during the Middle Ages. By purging herself of Jews, Spain purged herself of modern anti-Semitism. Indeed, during WWII, Franco allowed Spain to be one of the few open doors in the world for Jews escaping from the Nazis. No, this anti-Semitism has nothing to do with Spain’s past, and everything to do with Spain’s present as a Leftist nation.